Google makes AI audience personas available to all Display Video 360 users

Google announced on September 18, 2025, that its AI-powered Audience Persona feature is now available to all Display & Video 360 customers. The feature translates traditional marketing personas into actionable targeting parameters, enabling advertisers to create audience segments through natural language descriptions rather than manual audience selection processes.

The Audience Persona functionality addresses a fundamental challenge in programmatic advertising where audience creation typically requires extensive knowledge of platform-specific targeting taxonomies. According to Google's documentation, the feature allows users to "describe your audience's characteristics, interests, lifestyle, or demographics" and receive AI-generated suggestions for relevant audience lists and demographic targeting options.

Technical implementation of the Audience Persona feature occurs within Display & Video 360's campaign interface. Users navigate to the Line Items tab within an active campaign and select either an existing line item or create a new one. Within the Targeting section under Line Item details, a banner labeled "Help me select audience lists and demographics" provides access to the AI-powered tool.

The feature accepts comprehensive persona descriptions encompassing multiple demographic and psychographic dimensions. Supported input categories include gender, age, location, occupation, household income, activities, interests, values, and lifestyle characteristics. Google's AI system processes these natural language inputs and generates corresponding audience recommendations from the platform's extensive audience database.

Sample persona configurations demonstrate the feature's capabilities. Google's documentation includes an example targeting "Females between 25-49" described as "Mothers with children" in the "Top 10%" household income bracket. The lifestyle description specifies "Health-conscious, focused on personal and family well-being. Value safety and reliability in products. Proactive about maintaining a healthy lifestyle."

The AI-powered processing involves sophisticated natural language understanding algorithms that parse persona descriptions and identify relevant targeting parameters. The system maps descriptive text to Google's comprehensive audience taxonomy, which incorporates first-party data, third-party partnerships, and behavioral signals collected across Google's advertising ecosystem including search patterns, website interactions, and YouTube consumption data.

Generated audience suggestions appear as a curated list that users can review and modify before implementation. The feature provides flexibility in audience selection, allowing advertisers to adjust AI recommendations based on campaign-specific requirements or strategic considerations. Users can apply selected audiences and save line item configurations through standard Display & Video 360 workflows.

Editing capabilities enable ongoing optimization of AI-generated audience selections. Users can access a pencil icon to modify suggested audience lists, with changes replacing previous targeting configurations upon application. This iterative approach allows advertisers to refine audience targeting based on campaign performance data or evolving strategic priorities.

The availability expansion represents a significant democratization of sophisticated audience targeting capabilities within Display & Video 360. Previously, effective audience creation required deep familiarity with Google's audience categorization system and manual navigation through extensive targeting options. The AI-driven approach reduces technical barriers while maintaining targeting precision.

For programmatic advertising practitioners, the Audience Persona feature addresses operational inefficiencies in campaign setup processes. Traditional audience building involves time-intensive manual selection of demographic filters, interest categories, and behavioral indicators. The natural language approach streamlines this workflow while potentially uncovering audience combinations that manual selection might overlook.

The feature operates within Google's broader AI advertising infrastructure, which includes enhanced automation technologies and optimized targeting capabilities. According to previous performance data from Display & Video 360, AI-powered targeting implementations have demonstrated measurable improvements in campaign efficiency and cost reduction.

Google's implementation includes policy compliance safeguards that prevent audience creation for prohibited or sensitive topics. The system incorporates advertising policy restrictions, ensuring that AI-generated recommendations align with platform guidelines and regulatory requirements. Users attempting to describe audiences related to restricted categories may receive limited or no targeting suggestions.

The Audience Persona feature integrates with Display & Video 360's compliance framework, which requires adherence to Google Ads policies and restricted products and services guidelines. This integration ensures that AI-generated audience recommendations maintain platform standards while providing flexibility in legitimate targeting applications.

From a technical architecture perspective, the Audience Persona feature leverages Google's machine learning infrastructure to process natural language inputs and generate relevant audience mappings. The system continuously learns from user interactions and campaign performance data, potentially improving recommendation accuracy over time through iterative model refinement.

The feature's integration with Display & Video 360's existing audience management capabilities enables combination with other targeting methodologies. Users can layer AI-generated personas with additional audience types, geographic restrictions, or device targeting parameters to create comprehensive targeting strategies that address specific campaign objectives.

For marketing organizations utilizing Display & Video 360, the Audience Persona expansion provides standardization opportunities across team members with varying levels of platform expertise. Junior team members can leverage AI assistance to create sophisticated audience configurations, while experienced practitioners can use the feature to explore alternative targeting approaches or validate existing strategies.

The September 2025 availability expansion builds upon Google's ongoing development of privacy-focused advertising solutions within Display & Video 360. As the industry transitions away from third-party cookies, AI-powered audience creation tools provide alternative approaches to precise targeting while maintaining user privacy standards.

The timing aligns with broader industry trends toward artificial intelligence integration in advertising technology platforms. As programmatic advertising becomes increasingly sophisticated, tools that simplify complex processes while maintaining targeting effectiveness become competitive differentiators in platform selection and advertiser retention.

Timeline

• September 18, 2025: Google announces Audience Persona feature availability to all Display & Video 360 customers
• April 30, 2024: Google unveils DV360 updates at NewFront 2024 including initial audience persona capabilities
• April 30, 2024: Display & Video 360: Audience profile analysis deprecation announced
• March 6, 2024: Google deprecates Audience Profile Analysis feature within DV360
• January 26, 2025: DV360 introduces new tools for privacy-focused advertising
• January 31, 2023: Google updates Combined Audiences in DV360 allowing AND combinations

Summary

Who: Google Marketing Platform targeting all Display & Video 360 customers, including advertisers, agencies, and marketing professionals managing programmatic advertising campaigns.

What: Expansion of AI-powered Audience Persona feature enabling natural language description of target audiences that converts into actionable targeting parameters and audience list suggestions within Display & Video 360.

When: Announced September 18, 2025, with immediate availability to all Display & Video 360 customers following the announcement.

Where: Implementation across Google's Display & Video 360 programmatic advertising platform, specifically within campaign line item targeting configuration interfaces.

Why: Designed to simplify audience creation processes, reduce technical barriers in sophisticated targeting, improve campaign setup efficiency, and democratize access to advanced audience segmentation capabilities through artificial intelligence automation.